Synchronous forest fires in Europe under current and future climate conditions (SynFire)

Fire regimes and fire danger in Europe are changing in response to climate change. A warmer and drier climate is likely to increase the occurrence of forest fires as well as synchronous forest fire events affecting different locations simultaneously. These fire events put pressure on fire management resources and fire fighting efficiency. However, there are substantial knowledge gaps regarding the occurrence, drivers and future changes of synchronous forest fires in Europe, primarily due to lack of  observations. This project aims to fill these knowledge gaps by developing a statistical analysis framework relying on large-ensemble approaches, which enable a substantial increase in the sample size.

Specifically, this project aims to: (1) Identify synchronous forest fires using remote sensing observations and describe their hydro-climatic drivers. (2) Quantify the frequency of hydro-climatic conditions favoring synchronous forest fires under current climate conditions using a large ensemble of climate reforecasts. (3) Predict changes in the frequency of hydro-climatic conditions favoring synchronous forest fires under different climate change scenarios and develop worst-case storylines to inform policy-making processes.